Conversations in Context invited leaders from creative fields to reflect on the site’s past, present, and future, and to contribute their perspectives on the Glass House and its significance to contemporary debates.

Pedro Gadanho is the curator of contemporary architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Architecture and Design. A Portuguese architect, curator, and writer, Gadanho holds a master’s in Architecture from the University of Porto, a master’s in Art and Architecture from the United Kingdom’s Kent Institute of Design, and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Mass Media from the University of Porto, where he has also served on the Faculty of Architecture (FAUP).  He has curated numerous architecture exhibitions in Europe, including Portugal’s entry for the 2004 Venice Biennale.  Gadanho is responsible for a broad portfolio that reinforces the Museum’s commitment, since 1932 when Philip Johnson founded the Department of Architecture, to contemporary architecture. In addition to building the Museum’s holdings of contemporary architecture, he will oversee the annual Young Architects Program (YAP), co-organized with MoMA PS1, and counting Philip Johnson among its recipients (1999), and the two-year-old YAP International Program in conjunction with the MAXXI in Rome and Constructo in Santiago, Chile. Gadanho will organize further exhibitions in the Museum’s ‘Issues in Contemporary Architecture’ series and develop larger scale exhibitions of contemporary architecture, including exhibitions that explore relationships between architecture and other contemporary art practices.

Matthias Hollwich, SBA is the co-founder of HWKN and a registered European Architect. Before co-founding HWKN, Hollwich worked at OMA in Rotterdam, Eisenman Architects and Diller + Scofidio in New York City. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been the creator of an international conference on aging and architecture: New Aging. In 2004, Hollwich finished editing his first book with Rainer Weisbach at the Bauhaus: UmBauhaus – Updating Modernism. His work has been featured in Wallpaper*, The New York Times, Bauwelt, Dwell, and Architectural Digest. He has been a speaker at TEDx Atlanta and the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam. Hollwich is driven by the aim to upgrade man-made environments on a human and engaging scale.

Marc Kushner, AIA  is co-founder of HWKN and has worked for J. Mayer H. Architects in Berlin and Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis (LTL) in New York City. Since graduating from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2004, Kushner has co-taught advanced architecture studios at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation with Juergen Mayer and Marc Tsurumaki, as well as a summer studio at Parsons. He is currently teaching in the real estate development program at Columbia and speaking about media and architecture at events around the country. Kushner has been published in magazines and books, including an upcoming article in A+D about humanity’s architectural future. Kushner believes that architecture has a duty to serve its patrons and a responsibility to entertain the public.

HWKN was MoMA/PS1’s 2012 Young Architects Program winner.

Go to Film page